The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation last week announced recipients in the U.S. and Canada of 180 fellowships from nearly 3000 applicants. Fellows in this 85th year of the program include seven who are jazz-related: composer-pianists Billy Childs (winner of two Grammies in 2006), Ryan Cohan (Chicago-based, in trumpeter Orbert Davis's ensembles) and Chuck Owen (prof of jazz studies at University of South Florida, Tampa), trumpeter-composer-educator Wadada Leo Smith (of the AACM, a professor at California Institute of the Arts), … [Read more...]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 30 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006) Read More…

About Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life?
What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

@JazzMandel

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Interviews & Articles

Howard Mandel c 1998/published by DownBeat, July 1998, under headline Beneath the Underdog (the editor's reference to Charles Mingus's autobiography):
There's an anchor for New York's downtown free jazz and improv "wild bunch": his name is William … [Read More...]

This is a complete version of the feature on pianist Matthew Shipp I wrote for The Wire, published in February, 1998
Is this the face of New York's jazz avant now? Pianist Matt Shipp's mug can be wide open, inquisitive, or guardedly blank, his … [Read More...]

Miles Davis
intended On The Corner to be a
personal statement, an esthetic breakthrough and a social provocation upon its
release in fall of 1972. He could hardly have been more successful: the album
was all that, though it has taken decades for its … [Read More...]